The North American West in the Twenty-First Century

Brenden W. RensinkHistory
The North American West in the Twenty-First Century

Author: Brenden W. Rensink

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

ISBN: 9781496233288

Category: History

Page: 419

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In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner famously argued that the generational process of meeting and conquering the supposedly uncivilized western frontier is what forged American identity. In the late twentieth century, “new western” historians dissected the mythologized western histories that Turner and others had long used to embody American triumph and progress. While Turner’s frontier is no more, the West continues to present America with challenging processes to wrestle, navigate, and overcome. The North American West in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Brenden W. Rensink, takes stories of the late twentieth-century “modern West” and carefully pulls them toward the present—explicitly tracing continuity with or unexpected divergence from trajectories established in the 1980s and 1990s. Considering a broad range of topics, including environment, Indigenous peoples, geography, migration, and politics, these essays straddle multiple modern frontiers, not least of which is the temporal frontier between our unsettled past and uncertain future. These forays into the twenty-first-century West will inspire more scholars to pull histories to the present and by doing so reinsert scholarly findings into contemporary public awareness.

Frontiers Past and Future

Carl AbbottLiterary Criticism
Frontiers Past and Future

Author: Carl Abbott

Publisher:

ISBN: UCSC:32106018584331

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 248

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"Abbott offers a fruitful new way to read science fiction, one that also greatly enriches our understanding of western history and its impact on our collective imagination. Detailing the overlap of science fiction and western fiction - especially relating to their mutual interest in and concerns about frontier expansionism - he reveals an unsuspected common ground that informs the writings of both camps." "Reviewing the work of many Hugo and Nebula Award winners, as well as drawing upon popular film and television series (like the Buck Rogers serials), Abbott's study journeys across the far reaches of science fiction's universe."

The Lonely American

Jacqueline OldsPsychology
The Lonely American

Author: Jacqueline Olds

Publisher: Beacon Press

ISBN: 0807000345

Category: Psychology

Page: 246

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A study of the effects of loneliness in modern life links the American lifestyle--including a work ethic emphasizing productivity over personal relationships and an array of electronic diversions--to a growing social isolation in an overstimulating world, an isolation that leads to a deterioration in cognition and feelings of hostility and self-destructiveness.

Hunger for the Wild

Michael L. JohnsonHistory
Hunger for the Wild

Author: Michael L. Johnson

Publisher:

ISBN: UVA:X030112643

Category: History

Page: 562

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Americans have had an enduring yet ambivalent obsession with the West as both a place and a state of mind. Michael L. Johnson considers how that obsession originated, how it has determined attitudes toward and activities in the West, and how it has changed over the centuries.

Authorship’s Wake

Philip SayersLiterary Criticism
Authorship’s Wake

Author: Philip Sayers

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

ISBN: 9781501367687

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 224

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Authorship's Wake examines the aftermath of the 1960s critique of the author, epitomized by Roland Barthes's essay, “The Death of the Author.” This critique has given rise to a body of writing that confounds generic distinctions separating the literary and the theoretical. Its archive consists of texts by writers who either directly participated in this critique, as Barthes did, or whose intellectual formation took place in its immediate aftermath. These writers include some who are known primarily as theorists (Judith Butler), others known primarily as novelists (Zadie Smith, David Foster Wallace), and yet others whose texts are difficult to categorize (the autofiction of Chris Kraus, Sheila Heti, and Ben Lerner; the autotheory of Maggie Nelson). These writers share not only a central motivating question – how to move beyond the critique of the author-subject – but also a way of answering it: by writing texts that merge theoretical concerns with literary discourse. Authorship's Wake traces the responses their work offers in relation to four themes: communication, intention, agency, and labor.

American Indian Water Rights and the Limits of Law

Lloyd BurtonHistory
American Indian Water Rights and the Limits of Law

Author: Lloyd Burton

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015021992568

Category: History

Page: 200

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Burton dissects the irreconcilable conflict of interest within the Interior Department (between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Indian Affairs). He also examines the methods of managing disputes in contemporary cases and offers original policy recommendations that include establishing an Indian Water Rights Commission to help with the paradoxical task now facing the federal government--restoring to tribes the water resources it earlier helped give away.

Promised Lands

David M. WrobelCity promotion
Promised Lands

Author: David M. Wrobel

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015055805033

Category: City promotion

Page: 344

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Whether seen as a land of opportunity or as paradise lost, the American West took shape in the nation's imagination with the help of those who wrote about it; but two groups who did much to shape that perception are often overlooked today. Promoters trying to lure settlers and investors to the West insisted that the frontier had already been tamed-that the only frontiers remaining were those of opportunity. Through posters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and other printed pieces, these boosters literally imagined places into existence by depicting backwater areas as settled, culturally developed regions where newcomers would find none of the hardships associated with frontier life. Quick on their heels, some of the West's original settlers had begun publishing their reminiscences in books and periodicals and banding together in pioneer societies to sustain their conception of frontier heritage. Their selective memory focused on the savage wilderness they had tamed, exaggerating the past every bit as much as promoters exaggerated the present. Although they are generally seen today as unscrupulous charlatans and tellers of tall tales, David Wrobel reveals that these promoters and reminiscers were more significant than their detractors have suggested. By exploring the vast literature produced by these individuals from the end of the Civil War through the 1920s, he clarifies the pivotal impact of their works on our vision of both the historic and mythic West. In examining their role in forging both sense of place within the West and the nation's sense of the West as a place, Wrobel shows that these works were vital to the process of identity formation among westerners themselves and to the construction of a "West" in the national imagination. Wrobel also sheds light on the often elitist, sometimes racist legacies of both groups through their characterizations of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans. In the era Wrobel examines, promoters painted the future of each western place as if it were already present, while the old-timers preserved the past as if it were still present. But, as he also demonstrates, that West has not really changed much: promoters still tout its promise, while old-timers still try to preserve their selective memories. Even relatively recent western residents still tap into the region's mythic pioneer heritage as they form their attachments to place. Promised Lands shows us that the West may well move into the twenty-first century, but our images of it are forever rooted in the nineteenth.

Still

Robb KendrickHistory
Still

Author: Robb Kendrick

Publisher: M. K. Brown Range Life

ISBN: STANFORD:36105131695236

Category: History

Page: 236

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The photographer presents eloquent tintype cowboy photographs taken on ranches across fourteen states of the America West, British Colombia, Canada, and Coahuila, Mexico, in a compelling collection that reveals the rich variety of people who are drawn to the cowboy lifestyle.